"Goodnight Mr Panda" by Steve Antony (Hodder Children's Books)

Steve Antony's well-mannered and impeccable Mr Panda is back and we DEMAND our own doughnut-covered pyjamas!
(Sorry, that was a bit rude wasn't it, demanding things like that - certainly not the Mr Panda way!)

"Goodnight Mr Panda" is the latest in Steve Antony's fantastic "Mr Panda" series, which has gone from success to success, selling over 600,000 copies worldwide.

This is great for two reasons

1) Steve's books are awesome and Mr Panda is an awesome character

2) 600,000 readers might let those fabulous moral lessons in previous Mr Panda books soak in, surely contributing to a worldwide movement in people being a lot nicer? No?

This time Mr Panda is offering valuable and sage advice at bedtime. Mr Panda is ready, wearing those utterly adorable PJs but before he slides off to sleep, his friends bid him goodnight.

Ew! Bad breath, Hippo!

As you can see, Mr Panda's friends definitely need a few pointers in bedtime etiquette...

Ew, imagine Hippo's morning breath. Grim!

There are so many little touches that make these books brilliant. Panda's completely deadpan expression while dishing out his advice. The little Lemur who (let's face it) is a bit of a suck-up but still funny nonetheless.

Ack, at least tell us you're going to wash your hands after using the loo, Skunk!

All the characters are ace though and it's the fun unspoken visual gags that really bring these stories to life. Even though C maintains she's too old for these books, and already impeccably mannered (HAHAHAHAHAHAH!) she still found them as charming and amusing as she did when we first saw Mr Panda teaching the value of please and thank you way back in book 1. So many books could learn a lesson from the way Steve's stories offer a neat moral message without layering it on too thick with a trowel - using subtlety and humour (and one of the funniest characters in children's picture books, of course!)

Utterly perfect stuff.

"Goodnight Mr Panda" by Steve Antony is out now, published by Hodder Children's Books (kindly supplied for review).